Mixed-Member Electoral Systems in Constitutional Context Batto, Nathan F., Huang, Chi, Tan, Alexander C., Cox, Gary W. Published by University of Michigan Press Batto, F. & Huang, Chi & Tan, C. & Cox, W.. Mixed-Member Electoral Systems in Constitutional Context: Taiwan, Japan, and Beyond. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016. Project MUSE., https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/52095 No institutional affiliation (23 Dec 2018 13:08 GMT) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Conclusions Mixed- Member Systems Embedded within Constitutional Systems Chi Huang A concluding chapter may be expected to pull all the previous chapters together. Although inferring from individual chapters generally applicable statements about the consequences of mixed- member electoral systems is not easy, we can still expound upon the common threads running through the entire volume and briefly summarize the major findings of our puzzlesolving efforts. Theoretically, the most important theme that has emerged from this volume is that the effects of electoral systems must be considered within a specific context. Whereas the conventional approach is to consider the effects of legislative electoral systems in isolation, hence called legislaturecentric, this volume has repeatedly demonstrated that similar electoral systems embedded within different constitutional arrangements can produce very different sets of incentives. Specifically, researchers should keep both legislative seats and executive offices in view while analyzing the effects of legislative electoral systems. Institutions matter, but the institutional context within which those institutions are embedded also matters. Starting Point: A Puzzle Grofman (2001) suggests that political science in general and comparative politics in particular can advance by solving real- world puzzles. This book 300
Conclusions 301 starts with a puzzle for researchers of electoral systems: Why is it that two similar East Asian democracies, Taiwan and Japan, both switched from similar SNTV to similar new MMM systems, yet displayed divergent speeds and degrees of approaching theoretically expected political consequences (see Huang 2011)? As Huang, Kuo, and Stockton point out in chapter 1, after the electoral reform in 1994, Japan saw a gradual evolution from a multiparty system toward a two- party system over five House of Representatives election cycles. In contrast, after Taiwan s constitutional amendment in 2005, the party system changed almost immediately to a two- party mold in the first postreform legislative election in 2008 and remained so in the second election in 2012. Comparative Methodology The approach we have adopted in this book to solve the puzzle is to look beyond legislative electoral systems per se. Besides examining the similarities and differences between each country s electoral rules, we further embed each legislative electoral system within its broad political contexts, especially its constitutional framework of executive power (see also Grofman 1999). At first glance, this approach seems to complicate our task since each country tends to have a unique combination of electoral arrangements, constitutional set- ups, and party systems. Yet this broader perspective forces us to conduct comparative studies both within and between countries. By tracing the same country over time before and after the electoral reform, we can focus more on the pure effects of electoral system change under the identical constitutional framework, although within- case design also tends to lose sight of the inherent interaction between electoral systems and constitutional arrangements. This shortcoming is overcome by drawing comparisons between systems so as to isolate and verify the best candidate, that is, the coordination for pursuing executive offices, to explain their differences in outcomes. The 10 chapters in this volume adopt, explicitly or implicitly, this joint within- system and between- system comparisons approach. Solution to the Puzzle: Executive- Centric Theory Through elaborate country comparisons, all the contributors reach the same conclusion. That is, the electoral system is no doubt important since
302 Mixed-Member Electoral Systems in Constitutional Context it determines how votes cast in an election are translated into seats in the legislature. Yet it does not operate in vacuum. Since parties and elites aim at winning both executive offices and legislative seats, whether the head of government is directly elected and how cabinet posts are allotted also affect how the legislative electoral system shapes politicians incentives. Therefore, the competition for executive power shapes the party system as much as it does the legislative arena. To fully understand the effects of an electoral system, we must imbed it within the broader political contexts, especially the constitutional framework, of the country in question. The reason for this is because the appeal of and the competition for the executive offices often occupy a higher priority for political parties and elites, and it is the combination of the legislative electoral system and the constitutional setup that defines the payoffs of capturing executive offices and the degree of cross- district coordination required to capture the executive office. To evaluate the impacts of the mixed- member electoral systems, several factors should be taken into account. Legislature- centric theory indeed spells out clearly the impact of district magnitude, the effective threshold for the party list tier, the ballot structure, assembly size, and dual candidacy, among other factors. Executive- centric theory, on the other hand, further broadens our theoretical landscape by examining embedded effects of electoral systems, including the payoffs of the executive offices, the degree of coordination required to capture the executive offices, and the sustainability of the executive offices (e.g., term limits). Other things being equal, the higher the payoffs and the greater degree of cross- district coordination required to win the executive offices, the stronger the incentives for elites to form and stay in the major parties, and therefore the faster the country will move toward a two- party system. As Lin argues in chapter 2, this explains why Japan under the parliamentary system, which allows for some leeway in postelection bargaining, took a much longer time to evolve into a two- party system, while Taiwan under the semipresidential system, in which the winner of the presidential race takes all the cabinet posts and leaves no room for postelection bargaining, moved almost immediately to a two- party system after shifting from SNTV to MMM. However, the comparative studies looking beyond Japan and Taiwan in part II caution us not to jump to a conclusion that the presidential/ semipresidential system under MMM hastens a two- party system while the parliamentary system does otherwise. As Hicken points out in chapter 8, parliamentary Thailand moved from a multiparty system to a two- party system after adopting an MMM system in 1997 while the presidential
Conclusions 303 Philippines changed in the opposite direction in the post- Marcos era even before implementing an MMM system. This seemingly contradictory pair serves as a warning against treating the institutional rules mechanically and directs our attention to the underlying factor: the nature of the executive office, including the appeal of capturing the office and the sustainability of the office. Instead of generating a new puzzle, the cases of Thailand and the Philippines actually reinforce the executive- centric theory. The same argument extends to a different type of mixed- member system mixed- member proportional (MMP). As Tan and Shugart argue in their chapter 9 on parliamentary New Zealand, since MMP was adopted in 1993 the effective number of electoral parties rose between 1993 and 1996 and then has generally declined since the first MMP election in 1996 but a high number of very small microparties remains. This stands out in contrast to the mostly similar case of Germany. Taking into account not only the features of the MMP system but also politicians pursuit of ministerial posts in the cabinet can help illuminate this idea. Batto, Kim, and Matukhno s chapter 10 on Bolivia and Russia further indicates that the so- called contamination effect in the literature of MMM systems is not limited to the two ballots for legislators but may well also exist between executive and legislative ballots. In other words, what the voters know of the presidential candidate may also shape their vote choices on the SMD and PR ballots. They find that while voters may vote for the PR list to support the presidential candidate, whether or not these contamination effects extend to the nominal tier depends on the level of institutionalization of the party. This implies that the coattail effects often considered unique to presidential systems combined with single- member congressional districts may also apply in mixed- member systems due to the visibility of the presidential candidates, another example of executive- centric theory. Extensions to Other Parts of the Political Systems The number of parties is one of the most heavily researched variables in comparative politics, but other facets of the political system are also crucial in determining the ways in which politics operate in any country. In this volume, contributors have examined faction systems, nominations, post allocation, preelectoral coalitions, and ticketsplitting and found that the embedded institutional context produces interesting variations in each of these areas.
304 Mixed-Member Electoral Systems in Constitutional Context Faction Systems In parliamentary Japan, the change from SNTV to MMM shifted the focus of competition away from intraparty competition and toward interparty competition. As many expected, this did somewhat weaken the LDP s internal factions and strengthen the party leadership. However, Kobayashi and Tsukiyama argue in chapter 3 that the prime minister s need to maintain parliamentary confidence gives the factions leverage and ensures that they will continue to exercise considerable influence. In contrast, Batto and Huang find in chapter 4 that electoral reform has had a much more modest influence on Taiwanese factions. KMT local factions are constructed to win control of local governments, especially city mayors and county magistrates, so the change in the national legislative electoral system has not affected them much. DPP factions are more focused on national politics, but the evolution of those factions from legislative- centered to presidential contender- centered is primarily a result of the presidency becoming an achievable goal rather than because of electoral reform. The experience of the KMT and DPP factions also points to the limits of focusing solely on the electoral system in the national legislature, as both have been shaped by a variety of electoral rules, including those for local executives, local assemblies, and party offices. Candidate Selection, Post Allocation, and Preelectoral Coalitions The centrality of executive offices also explains some differences in intraparty competition, nominations, and preelectoral coalitions. Yu, Shoji, and Batto suggest in chapter 5 that because legislators are commonly appointed to executive positions in Japan but not in Taiwan, the incentives to remain in the parliament are much stronger in Japan. The resulting different emphasis on incumbency implies different sets of problems that parties need to resolve in the nomination stage. In Japan, where the best districts are usually occupied by entrenched incumbents, parties developed the innovative kobo system to allocate nominations for less desirable districts. In Taiwan, incumbents are not protected, and the parties developed a system of polling primaries to determine hotly contested nominations in very desirable districts. Nemoto and Tsai point out in chapter 6 that, in both Taiwan and Japan, parties used cabinet positions to reward party politicians for going out and winning votes in elections. However, while the use of cabinet posi-
Conclusions 305 tions as carrots was widespread in Japan, it was much more limited in Taiwan due to the fact that legislators could not concurrently serve as ministers. Likewise, they argue that the presence of institutional features such as the confidence vote and bicameralism made alliances between large and small parties more tenable in Japan. Voters Behavior The differences in the feasibility of small parties, nomination strategies, and preelectoral coalition that result from differences in the constitutional structures in turn define the choice set available to voters and thus shape their patterns of straight- and split- ticket voting. As Wang, Lin, and Hsiao find in chapter 7, in both Taiwan and Japan ticket- splitting takes place mainly within the two major coalition camps rather than across camps. Identifiers with small parties are more likely to be ticketsplitters when they vote sincerely in their PR ballot but support viable district candidates of major parties of the same alliances. This result of voter- level analysis meets the expectation of the conventional legislaturecentric theory well. However, it does not mean that the legislature- centric perspective is sufficient to explain ticket- splitting patterns. Quite the contrary, it further confirms the importance of understanding how preelectoral coalitions are shaped to begin with by both executive posts and legislative seats, a point our executive- centric perspective emphasizes. In essence, political elites structure the alternatives based on institutional incentives executive as well as legislative and then voters respond to the available choice set on ballots based the electoral rules. In this respect, executive- centric theory reminds researchers to pay close attention to how both constitutional and electoral systems impose restraints on the way voters can vote. Although this volume focuses on the effects of mixed- member electoral systems, especially MMM systems, we believe that our findings and conclusions have profound implications for the study of electoral systems in general. Electoral systems, important as they are, do not operate in a vacuum. Their origins, evolution, and impacts can be fully understood only when they are embedded within their constitutional frameworks. The literature on electoral rules is indeed impressive and often considered as one of the most advanced areas in political science. Explicitly incorporating executive- centric theory into electoral systems research may be the critical next step leading to future scientific breakthroughs.
306 Mixed-Member Electoral Systems in Constitutional Context Implications for the Quality of Democracy This book mainly focuses on describing and explaining why similar mixedmember electoral systems embedded within different constitutional systems can produce quite different impacts on the party systems and faction systems. Yet the executive- centric theory and the empirical evidence of this volume also have important implications for concern about the quality of democracy, both inside and outside academia. There have been ongoing debates on the trade- off between democratic accountability and representation. There are also advocates of political reforms through electoral engineering. Yet most of the discussions and debates are either on the relative merits of different democratic regimes or on the advantage and disadvantages of various legislative electoral systems. For example, Lijphart (1999) argues that the parliamentary system is superior in terms of the quality of democracy and democratic representation, while Persson, Roland, and Tabellini (1997) find that presidential system is superior in term of fostering accountability. Meanwhile, it is well known that the more permissive an electoral system is (such as the PR system), the easier it is for preexisting social cleavages to manifest as political parties and thus promote representation. The more restrictive electoral systems (such as the SMD system), on the other hand, tend to constrain the number of parties and thus clarify political responsibility (Taagepera and Shugart 1989). Mixed- member systems, despite its hope for getting the best of both worlds, unavoidably also inherit the advantage and disadvantages of either according to the way SMD and PR tiers are combined. MMM, which weighs heavily in favor of the SMD tier and against the PR list, tends to strengthen accountability at the cost of representation, while MMP, which allocated seats by the PR ballot, is relatively balanced between the two criteria of the quality of democracy. Although these arguments are enlightening, they tend to miss the key link between the constitutional arrangements and electoral systems. This book bridges the gap by embedding electoral systems within their constitutional systems. The executive- centric theory argues that political parties and elites seek not only to maximize seats in the parliament but also to seize executive offices. It is the combination of the legislative electoral system and the constitutional set- up that defines the payoffs of capturing executive offices and the degree of cross- district coordination required to win the executive offices. Hence to fully understand the effects of an electoral system, we must imbed it within the broader
Conclusions 307 political context, especially the constitutional framework, of the country in question. For example, in presidential and semipresidential systems the president exercises the executive authority. The ultimate goal of most political parties and their leaders is undoubtedly to control both executive and legislative branches, although the appeal of and the competition for the presidency often occupies a higher priority (Curini and Hino 2012). This implies that presidential contests often spill over to legislative elections (Huang and Wang 2014). Thus the conventional wisdom that the separation of power offers voters a better opportunity to hold politicians in different branches accountable for different things deserves further close scrutiny under the executive-centric perspective. Implications for Electoral Reform Electoral systems do not change often, but when they do they are often motivated by high hopes of solving some political problems and enhancing the quality of democracy. But the executive- centric theory of this book implies that electoral reform alone is not a panacea. Whether and to what extent electoral reform achieves the advocated goals depends not only on the specification of new electoral rules per se but also on the context within which such rules are embedded (see also Bowler and Donovan 2013). If a real- world electoral reformer/engineer wants to assess whether their goals are realistically attainable or not, be they reducing money politics, downsizing factions, or enhancing electoral accountability, she needs a more comprehensive theory to predict how politicians and voters would actually react to such reform. This book brings in a large part of the political payoff, that is, executive offices, that reformers, just like academics, have not always kept clearly in mind. For example, one of the goals of electoral reform in Japan is to break the importance of factions in order to shift the focus toward interparty competition in policy issues. As Kobayashi and Tsukiyama point out in chapter 3, changing from SNTV to MMM did somewhat weaken the internal factions of the LDP, but this trend has been slower and far less intense than initially expected. If reformers had taken into account the parliamentary system and the importance of cabinet posts, they would have been less surprised by this result. In fact, the strengthened prime minster even has found room to maneuver within the faction system, preserving the overall
308 Mixed-Member Electoral Systems in Constitutional Context system while enhancing his own power by favoring his own faction and giving posts to smaller rival factions. In New Zealand, on the other hand, the primary aim of the shift from pure SMD to MMP was to increase the quality of representation by encouraging stronger ties between representatives and voters. Shugart and Tan find in chapter 9 that the results are indeed more reflective of the voters preferences. Yet as mentioned earlier, the effective number of electoral parties has generally declined but a high number of very small microparties remain. This has contributed to one of the more unpopular facets of the new system, that smaller parties are often the kingmakers in coalition politics. This fragmentation of the party system can be understood only by taking account of politicians pursuit of ministerial posts in the cabinet under New Zealand s parliamentary system. Thailand and the Philippines constitute another pair of examples. Electoral reformers in both countries desire a stronger nationalized party system. Yet as Hicken points out in chapter 8, Thailand was successful in moving toward a nationalized politics and a two- party system after adopting the MMM system while the Philippines failed. Limiting the president to one term in the Philippines provides a disincentive for presidential candidates to build strong nationalized parties. Again, the competition for executive offices is important and mediates the effects of electoral systems. In short, the executive- centric perspective advanced in this book matters in the world beyond academia. Political pundits, politicians, reformers, and the general public alike can gain greater insight by keeping both legislative and executive payoffs in mind while deliberating the relative merits of different democratic institutions. References Bowler, Shaun, and Todd Donovan. 2013. The Limits of Electoral Reform. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Curini, Luigi, and Airo Hino. 2012. Missing Links in Party- System Polarization: How Institutions and Voters Matter. Journal of Politics 74 (2): 460 73. Grofman, Bernard. 1999. Preface: Methodological Steps toward the Study of Embedded Institutions. In Elections in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan under the Single Non- Transferable Vote: The Comparative Study of an Embedded Institution, ed. Bernard Grofman, Sung- Chull Lee, Edwin A. Winckler, and Brian Woodall. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Grofman, Bernard, ed. 2001. Political Science as Puzzle Solving. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Huang, Chi. 2011. Political Consequences of the MMM Electoral Systems in Taiwan and Japan. Paper presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Seattle, September 1 4.
Conclusions 309 Huang, Chi, and T. Y. Wang. 2014. Presidential Coattails in Taiwan: An Analysis of Voter- and Candidate- Specific Data. Electoral Studies 33 (March): 175 85. Lijphart, Arend. 1999. Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries. New Haven: Yale University Press. Persson, Torsten, Gerard Roland, and Guido Tabellini. 1997. Separation of Powers and Political Accountability. Quarterly Journal of Economics 112 (4): 1163 1203. Taagepera, Rein, and Matthew Søberg Shugart. 1989. Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems. New Haven: Yale University Press.